Yup. Still stuck.
Jan. 4th, 2003 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWriter's block is a bitch. Have spent the day resolutely avoiding constructive thought, rather like Harriet Vane in Have His Carcase:
Harriet continually found herself putting her work aside--"to clear" (as though it were coffee). Novelists who have struck a snag in the working-out of the plot are rather given to handing the problem over in this way to the clarifying action of the sub-conscious. Unhappily, Harriet's sub-conscious had other coffee to clear and refused quite definitely to deal with the matter of the town-clock. Under such circumstances it is admittedly useless to ask the conscious to take any further steps. When she ought to have been writing, Harriet would sit comfortably in an armchair, reading ...
I don't know what my sub-conscious's "other coffee" is, but it's certainly not interested in my plot problems. *sigh* I keep telling myself this is a lingering aftereffect of the flu, and it will get better soon. I really hope I'm right about that, because the bottom of a mineshaft at midnight has nothing on my mood after a week of being blocked.
The Baskerville Hounds are laughing at me. I just know it.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960. p. 290.
Harriet continually found herself putting her work aside--"to clear" (as though it were coffee). Novelists who have struck a snag in the working-out of the plot are rather given to handing the problem over in this way to the clarifying action of the sub-conscious. Unhappily, Harriet's sub-conscious had other coffee to clear and refused quite definitely to deal with the matter of the town-clock. Under such circumstances it is admittedly useless to ask the conscious to take any further steps. When she ought to have been writing, Harriet would sit comfortably in an armchair, reading ...
I don't know what my sub-conscious's "other coffee" is, but it's certainly not interested in my plot problems. *sigh* I keep telling myself this is a lingering aftereffect of the flu, and it will get better soon. I really hope I'm right about that, because the bottom of a mineshaft at midnight has nothing on my mood after a week of being blocked.
The Baskerville Hounds are laughing at me. I just know it.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960. p. 290.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-26 01:58 am (UTC)But I wanted you to know that this post made a difference to me, and I'm partway through the process of reading the rest of them... Don't ask me how I stumbled across your LJ, I think it was through a friend's list with a link to yours, somewhere... It doesn't matter now, I'm just glad I have.
(Just finished 3,000 words on a second book today, because after months the first one just wasn't getting written... I'll do them both, I've promised myself, and whatever else strikes me as needing to be written, but knowing someone else out there struggles with this really helps... Someday I'll be published in something other than magazine articles! I have confidence!)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-26 05:05 am (UTC)And when I made that post, it seemed like the most purely self-indulgent piece of narcisssism possible. So thank you. I shall no longer feel guilty over whining about my writer's block. *g*
I'm honestly not anyone to be intimidated by. And I'm very glad if you're finding my posts helpful.
Good luck with your novels!